


First Off the Cliff

by awed_frog



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (So Much), Author Is Quite Possibly Delusional, Biblical References, Dean-Centric, Episode: s11e10 The Devil in the Details, Episode: s11e11 Into the Mystic, Episode: s11e12 Don't You Forget About Me, Episode: s11e13 Love Hurts, Harry Potter References, Little Women References, M/M, Meta, Random Sherlock Quote, Some politics, Star Wars References, The Breakfast Club - Freeform, The Lord of the Rings References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 18:09:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5976313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awed_frog/pseuds/awed_frog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A late night Dean Winchester appreciation meta - and a belated happy birthday to one of my favourite characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Off the Cliff

**Author's Note:**

> So, here it is. The companion piece to _No One But You_ , I guess. I've been writing it for a while, and after last night's episode, well. I know it's sort of personal, but I needed to tidy up my head a little, and I hope it can contribute something to our understanding of Dean.

“I'm just saying you don't have to do this - be the guinea pig,” Sam says, and Dean doesn’t get it; or pretends not to.

“What?” he asks, and he doesn’t even look up.

“The martyr,” Sam says. “Try and carry the weight by yourself - do this.”

He’s not wrong; Dean’s just kissed Melissa Harper to get a curse off her. Now whatever that thing that was trying to kill her actually is, well it's going to come after him instead; will quite possibly kill him. But, hey, it doesn’t matter.

“I'm gonna be fine, okay?” he says. “And as long as I'm good, she's good, and that's the important thing.”

Yes, I really can’t understand how Cas thought to do this - sacrifice himself so that others would live, without even stopping to think how it would affect the people who love him.

No clue, honestly.

None.

Dean is incredibly cavalier with his own life because that’s what he’s been taught to do. There are two people alive who love him most than anything else in the world - Sam and Cas - and neither truly understands what Dean needs, and how to convince him to put himself first for a change. Sam doesn’t get it because he’s too human, and therefore, even if he _does_ know his brother better than anyone else (look at how easily he’d guessed what was eating away at Dean, and Dean’s connection to Amara) he’s unable to help him. He’s just too close to the whole mess of it. And Cas, well. Cas is not human, and that’s the problem, because Cas deals in absolutes and loves Dean unconditionally, no questions asked, and will accept anything from Dean, including his compulsion to self-destruction.

Now, like Harry, Dean grew up in a hostile environment where he was told, over and over, that he was nothing special. Like Harry, he was then violently thrust in a situation where, seemingly out of the blue, he was the most important person in the world (the Chosen One; Michael’s Sword); and, like Harry, what makes Dean remarkable is that despite all this, he remains humble and brave and fiercely protective of others. Harry’s saving grace - what made him choose Gryffindor over Slytherin, what stopped him from killing Sirius and Pettigrew, what allowed him to survive Dumbledore dying on him and made him walk into that forest - is his heart. His stubborn and unchallenged capacity to love. 

_Grief, it seemed, drove Voldemort out; though Dumbledore, of course, would have said that it was love_ \- this is the most important realization passing through Harry like a sharp knife as he buries Dobby. Dumbledore had tried telling him once before (the reality of him, that is; not this memory he now is inside Harry’s mind), after Sirius’ death, and Harry had raged against this simple truth.

(I’m going to use the full quote here, because I loved this moment to bits and it was plain perfect and what we all go through when someone dies and I can’t -)

_“I DON'T CARE!" Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE!"_

_"You do care," said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. "You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”_

And this is Dean, through and through. Someone who doesn’t know how to give up, because his heart won’t let him, even though the load on his shoulders grows ever heavier and he’s not sure - he sometimes thinks he _knows_ , in fact, that he will be crushed to death by the weight of it.

 

I was expecting this latest episode to - well, not to turn me against Dean, because, come on - but to be one of those canon things we’d rather forget about.

And instead -

They’re at the end of their rope, here. They have no one to turn to. ‘Cas’ has walked out on Dean after flat-out telling him his connection to the Darkness (this vile thing Dean is terrified of) is a good thing, and Dean is not above sleeping around when he needs comfort. It’s not that he’s looking for Mrs Right, after all: Mrs Right Now will do just fine. In real life, I’d probably find this pathetic - someone cruising the bars on Valentine’s day to find a woman sad enough to bang a stranger - but this is the magic of fiction, isn’t it? By removing a character from our surroundings, and by gaining complete access to their minds and hearts, we can afford to withhold judgement and feel sad for them instead.

And, well, I _am_ sad, because this was always Dean’s (predictable, pathetic) way to find comfort in a world where no one really wanted him around, and what we’re told is that it doesn’t even work that well. It didn’t work when he was a young man marked for death - for me, the fact that a threesome was on his bucket list basically said it all - in our days of loose morals and whateverness (not that I’m against it, mind) I don’t think it’d be difficult for a good-looking and silver-tongued guy like Dean to find two like-minded girls if he were so inclined. But, well, so far he hadn’t. 

(“What might we deduce about his heart?”)

To me, that suggests that, deep down (and like most men) he’s insecure in bed and he prefers not to bend too many rules because he’s been burned before. And, well, we _do_ know Dean is far more cuddly and vanilla with his partners than, for instance, his brother (Sam, who grew up with a firmer sense of self and purpose and is much more self-confident; Sam who can indulge in rough sex if he wants to, because he knows that this is it, just sex, just fun, that it won’t heal anything inside him and that’s okay).

Until those six months with Lisa, Dean is someone who never connected with a woman in any way and doesn’t even know how. His childhood was probably marked by confrontations and instability (from what he says about school and what we’ve seen, he probably never had a teacher - a woman - praising him for his work or his behaviour). His first experience of love (with Robin) made a huge impression on him and is clearly something he’s affected by even twenty years later, but Robin seemed to barely remember him, which implies it didn’t last very long and it wasn’t all that intimate (physically or emotionally). He went through highschool smooching random girls and cheating on them and being told off. He possibly (probably) turned tricks at some point, though the timeline is a bit sketchy - did he do it to keep his brother fed when John forgot to come home? Or did he start to pick up men after Sam had left, when there was no one around to make him feel like he was worth anything? 

Cassie is his first (and only) real girlfriend. It lasted about two weeks, and after that (very short) time, Dean basically bared his whole soul to her. A rookie mistake, and a big miscalculation and oh, _Dean_. So Cassie left (and, again, Dean won’t forget about her) and then John left and then Dean went to find Sam and found him doing grown-up, well-adjusted things - right on his way to become a lawyer and a husband.

I can’t imagine how much of a wreck Dean must have felt right then - here was his baby brother, his life all sorted out, happy and loved and admired and completely _normal_ , and Dean - Dean had just been left behind by the only parent he'd ever known (someone who wouldn’t show up again for months - not even after Dean had _begged_ him to - not even when Dean was _dying_ ), had never had a proper relationship, had no prospect of ever getting a real job and not a single friend on the face of the Earth.

And yet, like Harry (who never hated his aunt and uncle for making him sleep in a closet and never blamed Dumbledore for not keeping an eye on the situation and never resented all those other kids who grew up with a loving family and had a place to go back to for the Christmas holidays), Dean doesn’t feel bitter around his brother. He’s genuinely happy for Sam, because this is what Dean’s tried to do his whole life - look after Sammy. Make sure he was okay. Really, this is all we need to know about Dean, right there: he’s not strong enough, perhaps, to do it on his own, but he won’t feel sorry for himself; not at Sam’s expense, and, not in fact, at anyone’s expense.

One of the moments that made me fall in love with Dean (and which, curiously, is barely ever mentioned in the fandom when discussing Dean’s character) is what happens in _Provenance_ \- the hunt with the cursed painting. There, he and Sam are confronted with another kind of monster: the entitled upper-class.

Now, Sam is not threatened by them. To him, they’re just people. He’s confident in his own worth and abilities, and he’d been on his way to joining them, after all - I have no doubt whatsoever that he was doing well in Stanford; that he would have become that thing Dean once saw inside a poisoned dream. So Sam is very whatever about it, and even ends up being friendly (and more than friendly) with the art dealer’s daughter.

But Dean - Dean knows he’s not wanted. Knows he’s _scum_. Knows people like that won’t look at him twice, not ever - secretly fears they’re right in rejecting him. And there is this moment - he and Sam have crashed some kind of vernissage, and they are quickly found out because, frankly, they’re dressed like _Rifles and Woodworking_ centerfolds and act accordingly. The art dealer confronts them, and Dean - Dean grabs a glass of champagne from a passing waiter - thanks the man (and this is a mistake, right here: you’re not supposed to thank waiters at this kind of events) - and then turns back to the art dealer, does this beautiful thing - he sniffs the wine as if he knows what he’s doing (clearly something he’s seen on the telly) and lifts his eyebrows at the guy with the most superior expression ever seen on a human face.

To me, that moment was gold and silver and honey. The fact Dean took his time to be polite to the waiter and sneered at the art dealer when it would have been more logical, perhaps, to do it to the other way around - how many people brown-nose their way around and act obnoxious as soon as they can get away with it - again, this is a _Harry Potter_ moment - “If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals,” Sirius once said, and he’d been right (Sirius, though - here you see it - how easy it is for someone who has nothing to act in a mean or selfish way - and this is the normal way to behave: of course Sirius hated Kreacher because he was stuck in that house, of course he wanted Harry to be his sidekick because he loved him so damn much, of course he’d keep annoying Snape - Sirius was not a bad person, but he was not Harry; he was like us).

Because despite everything that’s been done to him, Dean has a solid moral compass. He won’t stray from it, and if that means taking a curse upon himself, he’ll do it. Sam can think whatever he wants - Dean just can’t help it. It’s who he is.

And his heart, well.

What we know now is that Amara has nested inside it, yes, but she’s a dark desire of his (not the real thing), and thank _God_. She’s the love that’s all wrong - the husband who doesn’t want his wife anymore but is too cowardly to leave, the young girl twirling a married man around her little finger. She’s not that deep, selfless love that forces you to smile at a human who was once an angel and drive away from his life so he doesn’t have to fight monsters anymore; so he can be happy (without you). 

No, she’s not that. Never that.

 

A famous Italian comedian, Lella Costa, once had a routine that went like this (quoting from memory, sorry):

“I loved _Little Women_ growing up. I must have read it a thousand times. But, now I’m an adult, something puzzles me. Whenever I discuss the book with my girlfriends, one question always comes up. Which sister would we rather be? And the answer is inevitably -”

“Jo!” the crowd yells, as one.

“Yes, exactly, Jo. (LC looks fond for a minute, then switches to shark mode). Which makes no sense at _all_. Look, Jo ends up living as a destitute school teacher. She’s married to a lame man twice her age. Meanwhile, Amy, the pretty sister, lives in a castle with Laurie (crowd laughs, boos). So why _do_ women insist in identifying with Jo? I mean, I’ve discussed this issue in countless theatres, and every time you all scream _Jo_. It’s not even _close_. So, okay, that one time someone said _Beth_ , and all I could do was pat her arm and say, _Come on dear, it’s just a cough_.”

Now, Lella Costa is a proud and loud feminist and she’s making fun of us. Of course she understands why we all want to be Jo. We want to be Jo because she’s brave and funny and she follows her dreams. We like Jo because she’s a rebel. We like Jo, perhaps, because she is a writer, and even as children, we did understand this on some level - that the writer controls the story (recreates the world around him). 

And this leads me to wonder, what happens when we love a fictional character so _damn_ much? Do we want to be _like_ them? Do we want to be _with_ them? Or do we admire them from a distance, silently thanking whatever God is up there that we get to enjoy their stories curled up in bed - that _they_ are the ones killing and being killed, and that in the end, our boring little lives are just fine, thank you very much? 

I rather fear this question may be impossible to answer. We never know other people; we barely know ourselves. And, like ‘real’ love, our love for fictional characters shifts and varies. We mostly like characters because they were written to be liked; we like other characters because they allow us to express a nasty part of ourselves we would never dare to uncover. And obviously there are yet others we like for secret, unseeable reasons. So, who knows.

Now, last week I finished a YA novel. A so-called YA novel, I should add, because this irks me to no end, this (recent) distinction between, what?, real literature and YA? It’s sad, isn’t it? It’s the same thing people who make face creams do to sell more pots ( _True Man Scent, Mature Skin, 7-9 First Cream for Special Girls_ \- one reads the ingredients, and, yep, same shit in all of them).

Anyway, I guess this book was marketed as YA because the main character is a 13-year-old girl. Otherwise, it was a bleak, sobering book without any happy ending whatsoever. Reality sucks, the book said. Adults are unreliable, sometimes dangerous, and certainly no help. People who’re supposed to be your friends are ready to screw you over; and when someone is actually nice to you, it still doesn’t change anything.

I don’t know why I was so shocked by this story. The writing style was remarkable, and the writer is perfectly right - children’s books should not have a happy ending just because they’re children’s books. Still, the right-wing press hated it - and the more I thought about it, the more I realized the reason had nothing to do with its general sadness and misery. The thing is, that novel was clearly about class. Kids today call it _privilege_ , or maybe I’m mixing up my political labels, I don’t know; in my view, the thing is always the same - an unequal distribution of wealth which seems perfectly justifiable to those who profit from it and goes mostly unnoticed by those who’re losing out. 

And, again, this is the very core of what’s so beautiful about _Supernatural_ \- this reversal of roles, this near-obsession with free will and choice and the realization that, yeah, nothing is actually how it should be.

(“I thought angels were supposed to be guardians. Fluffy wings, halos - you know, Michael Landon. Not dicks.”)

(“I don't know what is right and what is wrong anymore, whether you passed or failed here.”)

(“He says the same thing about you.”)

And this is precisely what’s tragic about Dean, because Dean is a loser - the system is rigged against him, over and over again. No question there. As far the _human_ world is concerned (because, of course, the numerous ways Heaven tried to fuck him over would fill a book) - in a _normal_ society, someone would have helped him. Someone would have noticed his mum had died horribly and his father was too overcome to cope. Would have seen that Dean was increasingly caring for his brother on his own while the only adult left in the family was slowly turning into a (possibly delusional) alcoholic. 

But _Supernatural_ was always attentive to social inequality, as weird as that seems, and the society where Dean grew up is _not_ normal. In fact, it’s _still_ not normal (it's _worse_ ) - the US now has the highest rate of child poverty in the developed world (one child in five - up 60% in the last five years). Of course, what doesn’t help is that the top 1% basically owns 40% of the country’s wealth (the bottom 80% owns about 7%). 

(Perhaps if Dean had been born in Sweden, or something, John would have been able to care for his kids a bit better; then again, if he’d forgotten about Yellow Eyes and never taught his children how to fight and die, Sam would have become a demented Prince of Darkness, and the world would have ended.)

And this is always the way it is done in movies (and real life): a sort of proud _Damn right we’re dysfunctional and ill-organized - that’s how we bloody win_. 

“The reason the American Army does so well in wartime is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices it on a daily basis,” a Nazi general supposedly said in a post-war briefing, perhaps starting this myth which is now turning against us - that when you’re fighting the good fight, it doesn’t matter how efficient you are - heart if all you need ( _Star Wars_ , I’m looking at you).

So, yeah, society is what it is, which is why Dean is at the lowest step of the social ladder. He barely finished his schooling, never had a steady job, never had a regular paycheck (except perhaps when he was living with Lisa). He’s definitely stolen things, and done other questionable, possibly illegal things to get by (gambling, hustling pool, quite possibly soliciting). If he didn’t hunt monsters, Dean would probably be in prison. Or homeless.

Then again, if he didn’t hunt monsters, Dean would have made very different choices.

Which choices, though?

In Zachariah’s perfect world, a world where Dean has no issues of self-confidence whatsoever, he’s this sleek, purebred creature firmly anchored in the upper-class and slightly condescendent of wretched tech support worker Sam, the guy with the ill-fitting Walmarty shirt. And yet, something is missing, and Dean does find his way back to (the real) Sam.

In the Djinn’s dream (and aren’t those supposed to be about what you want?), Dean is basically himself, but without the sense of purpose hunting gives him - without the rigorous self-discipline his father forced upon him - most importantly, without his brother’s love and companionship. And his life _sucks_. Here, he’s at the other end of the social scale, but, again, this is not what matters: like Harry, Dean was never unhappy without money, and he’s not happy with it. He understands there’s more to life than that (again, a remarkable, selfless feat for someone who grew up with nothing), namely: Sam. Which means: someone who loves him unconditionally, who looks up to him (“I will never believe you’re anything but good.”), who makes him feel like he’s worth something.

 

“I could talk to you for a day about why he is the perfect blend of rogue-ish cowboy. Morally ambiguous, but has a clear moral compass. He’s funny, he’s off the cuff. When I was a kid on the playground, fights were about who got to play Han Solo. He’s just one of the best characters ever created,” says Chris Miller (the director of the upcoming movie about Han Solo).

Now, Dean is sort of based on Han Solo, and I must admit - I first saw _Star Wars_ last month.

I don’t know how I managed to avoid the movies all these years. The thing is, I was born in the right period, sort of, but I used to hate sci-fi as a kid, so I’d never been interested. I knew about them, of course, and I knew about the Big Twist, because who doesn’t? - but I’d never seen them. And then _The Force Awakens_ came out, and I realized this was a big part of - well - Western culture I was missing out on, and I forced myself to sit down and go through the whole thing during a rainy weekend.

Now, I grew up with Indiana Jones, so (like anyone with eyes) I was naturally drawn to Han Solo; and I was also thinking, in the back of my mind, that this, right here, was the blueprint for Dean, so I was curious. 

But, well I don’t see it. I don’t think Dean is like Han Solo, like, at all. Han Solo is the _Lovable Rogue_ \- the guy who doesn’t care about anyone but himself but gets away with it because he’s so funny and good-looking everyone loves him anyway. A far better example than Dean of the _Lovable Rogue_ on a modern screen is, for instance, Jack Sparrow from _Pirates of the Caribbeans_.

(Sorry: _Captain_ Jack Sparrow.)

But Dean - sure, he comes off as a bit morally grey in the very beginning, but we learn, fairly soon, how little he cares about himself, and how he has no agenda at all. Dean was never this happy-go-lucky half-pirate living on adrenaline. Sure, that’s who he _tried^_ to be, and he very nearly succeeded, but, like Cas, he always had ‘too much heart’ to be good in this complex role-playing he was attempting.

The way I see it, Dean didn’t need a Princess Leia to realize things were fucked up and he should do his part and save the day. Dean has known this from the start. He’s seen his mother burn to death on the ceiling of his nursery, for Chrissakes. He’s given up his childhood and his dreams and, in a sense, his entire personality to please his father and to make sure Sam was happy. And even during hunts - Dean is always the risk-averse one, the one making sure everyone lives, whatever the cost. He is nurturing and sensitive. He’s not Han Solo. What he is it's Andrew Clark during the week and John Bender on weekends and if he’s pretending to be Han Solo is to impress the girls and to feel better about himself.

(Yes, I went back and watched _The Breakfast Club_ again after that episode, because of reasons, and when it was over I wanted to die.)

 

So, well, when I stumbled onto the show, I liked Sam. Then came Castiel, and, of course, I loved him. And then I decided to write stories about it all to work on my English, foolishly overlooking the painstaking work you have to do to write believable characters - watching and rewatching; listening to what is said - and listening, most of all, to what is not said.

And when I started writing in Dean’s voice, I realized I had been in denial for a long time. Because, sure, Dean’s voice is perhaps a bit easier than Cas’, or even Sam’s - he has a distinctive way of speaking, and (in my eyes) he’s more predictable than Sam in his likes and dislikes and quirks and dreams.

But that wasn’t all of it. The more I wrote in Dean’s voice, the more I understood that my allegiances had changed, and why (and here I come back to _Little Women_ ). When I first started watching _Supernatural_ , I was a kid, and I wanted to be Sam, because we all want to be Sam: a fluffy-haired rebel whose rebellion is about getting himself into the best school in the country and send a _Fuck you very much_ postcard to his dysfunctional family. Sam, the first time I watched the show, was the dangerous one. The one who kept fighting after Jess had died, the one who dared to say no to his abusive father. The one who was prepared to do anything, including having close shaves with demons, because knowledge isn’t good or bad - it’s just knowledge, and the more you have of it, the better off you are.

And then, well, I grew up. I never noticed that I had, actually. I still don’t know how it happened, and I worried about it until I realized it’s the same for everyone - there’s never that moment when you say, _I’ve got this_ ; a day you wake up and you’re an adult. And yet, at some point you are. You still feel seventeen, but when you talk to an actual seventeen-year-old you end up thinking, _Oh God, I used to be like that_. By which I mean to say: stupid and reckless, and also wildly enthusiastic, hopeful, determined; convinced that you can do whatever you want, and yet feeling so insecure even leaving your bed is a struggle. Everything is the best thing ever. Everything is the end of the world.

(If you're still a teen, embrace this feeling, because it can be painful as fuck but also oh so _beautiful_ , and it definitely goes away.)

And Dean - well, I suddenly started to see it, and maybe I’m lucky I hadn’t seen it so far, because I guess other people see it at once - the kid forced to grow up too fast, the kid who’s keeping the whole world upright and yet still feels unworthy and unloved. 

Yes, that second time around I understood why Dean has always said yes to John, and why he is (or was) mostly a jerk to women, and why he has such a hard time trusting anyone, even Sam.

To like Dean, to really get him, has meant, for me, to accept this messy part of myself; to accept that perhaps I’m not, in the end, Sam: I’m not the good kid who thinks he’s a freak. No, perhaps I’m Dean; perhaps I’m the freak trying to pass as a good kid. And this, in a way, is what becoming an adult is really like. Teenagers think they’re unique, and uniquely flawed, but we can seem them for what they are (adorable dorks or insufferable fools or both: normal people who just haven’t found their place in the world yet); and grown-ups are supposed to conform to society, or to at least know what the rules are, but, well, we’re all just winging it, aren’t we? What we do is decide what we can’t live without (in Dean’s case, Sam) and then we go from there.

The trouble being, of course, that we have no Cas. Even if we’re lucky enough to have someone loving us unconditionally, that someone is only a human being, not an angel; not someone who can see us as we truly are (as we _imagine_ we are) and still want us and love us. There’s always these moments when we look at the people we care about - perhaps our family, as they laugh around a Christmas tree; or maybe our friends, making fun of each other in some overly crowded pub - and we think, _Thank God they don’t know who I really am_.

(Which is foolish, of course, because, like Dean, we’re not unlovable and unworthy freaks - none of us ever is. No, we mostly are how others see us: in Dean’s case, someone who doesn’t take himself very seriously, is extremely good at what he does but damn tired of doing it, and can get out of any situation - be it actual Hell or a teenager being rude - by following his heart, because it’s a good one.) 

Now, I still love Cas to bits, but I think what I’m going through here is the same _Lord of the Rings_ phenomenon I experienced once before, and I should really recognize by now: a choice between Legolas and Aragorn. 

As a child, I’d loved the elves the most, and when I first saw the movies, despite the immediate gut reaction I got when seeing Aragorn (Strider) the first time, I tried to be faithful to my childhood self; to stick with Legolas. And, boy, do we _have_ reasons to stick with him. He’s gorgeous, of course, and clever, and brave; and maybe he’s not the funniest angel in the Garrison, as Cas would say, but he can walk on snow and take out an armoured oliphant by himself, so, who cares? But the more I watched those movies (don’t ask), the more I came to realize _Aragorn_ was really the one drawing me in. He’s the one with a choice; with a destiny. He’s flawed, and afraid of his own weakness. He knows that, despite being a Dunédain, he’s only human. He can be corrupted. He will, one day, die.

The friendship between Aragorn and Legolas - between a broken man who wants to keep fighting and an age-old creature who trusts him unreservedly (an immortal being ready to die for his friend) - is the same dynamic we see week after week on _Supernatural_. The bond between Dean and Cas is just as deep, and, in a way, even deeper, because here there was a deliberate choice (I will _never_ believe otherwise, because, come on) to colour this bond with romantic undertones.

I think your favourite character says a lot about who you are, which is why I am reluctant to pick Dean once and for all. Also, we are all complex beings, and who we are and what we want can change over time. If well-scripted and well-acted, any character should be able to draw us in. Hell, look at bloody _Crowley_ \- a perfect example of how much good writing and extraordinary acting can overcome, because here is an extremely vicious, despicable demon (remember what he actually _did_ in the earlier seasons?) who’s become a darling cinnamon roll for so many of us. Behold the magical power of storytelling, blinding us once again and convincing us we are not blind at all.

 

At the end of last season, we saw Dean beat up Cas; we saw him throw Cas against a pile of books, between a Good Thief (Cyrus) and a Bad Thief (Eldon). To me, this immediately coded Cas as Jesus, and after all, why not? If anyone has died for humanity (*coughs uncomfortably*) it’s Cas. In fact, he died for humanity (*coughs again*) more than once. By saving Dean from Hell, he even redeemed him, in a way; saved him from his sins (such as they were). The imagery was striking and appropriate.

I never stopped to think, however, about how this was framing _Dean_. The Biblical narrative is poignant and very detailed on this, and where does it leave us? Is Dean the unmerciful Roman soldier who taunts Jesus by giving him vinegar instead of water (“Dean - please.”)? Is he Pontius Pilatus, a man who wasn’t, in the end, responsible of anything - a man who chose to take a step back and not care and walk away (“I see his point. You know, only humans can feel real joy, but also such profound pain. This is easier.”)? Or is he actually _God_ , this absent father Jesus called for as he was dying? An unforgiving, unsmiling God; a force strong enough to destroy Death himself?

Yes, perhaps Dean was created on a Han Solo blueprint - daredevil anti-hero comes to his senses and does what’s right - but we live in an era of darkness and uncertainty; a moment in time when even the true Han Solo is not allowed to have his happily ever after; I wonder, then, if Han Solo’s fate is to foreshadow Dean’s.

For a while, Dean has craved death, and I don’t blame him. He’s tired and beaten down and has given and lost way too much. We used to think the only reason he kept fighting was what he kept telling us: that he needed to take down monsters, to make the world a better place until - until his _own_ death would make the world a better place. And then he would give up. But then we learned, thanks to a spontaneous, unplanned confession to an unknown priest (and did Cas hear it?) that he has unfinished business; that he wants to keep living because there are ‘people, feelings, he wants to experience in a new way, or even for the first time’. Now, after his disastrous experience with Ben and Lisa, and his reaction to Sam’s gentle prodding (“Goose eggs, Sam.”) we know Dean is not thinking about a traditional life; about a family and a white picket fence. And he’s not thinking about Sam, either, because after all this time, he’s finally on his way to understand that, yes, Sam is the only constant in his life, and will always be the person he loves the most and the one he will sacrifice everything for, but Sam is also other things. Most importantly, Sam is a grown-up and a fine one at that. He can take care of himself, and Dean is starting to respect that.

I honestly don’t know anything anymore. What the writers meant to do with that confession, and how the casual viewers failed to remark upon it. To me, it was _such_ a revelation - how can you listen to that and not _wonder_ what it _means_? How can you read it as anything else as - as -

Well. We have a rough week ahead, I won’t go there.

The point is, we live in an era where Batman can become the Dark Knight and Han Solo can die. When I think about the end of _Supernatural_ , I get pessimistic, because this is increasingly a tragedy, not a comedy.

But I trust in one thing: this is (has always been) about Dean’s heart. About a small boy learning how to love on his own. About someone who’s been abandoned by everyone, who’s been betrayed over and over again, even by himself, and has remained true to his heart throughout it all. 

So, well, I know Dean is not perfect, but I’m with Dumbledore on this one. He knew that he was dying, that he would never get the chance to fix his own mistakes or to restore light to this world; and yet, the last time he saw his best commanders, this is all he said to them: "Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him." 

No, Harry was not the best fighter, or the smartest strategic thinker, or even the most talented at magic. But he could love so truly and so deeply he defeated Death itself, and that made all the difference.

**Author's Note:**

> (If you'd like to chat about this, or anything else, please leave a comment or come find me on tumblr @awed-frog.)
> 
> _When we started casting, we had archetypes in mind, which were Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. For Dean, we were looking for Han Solo. We were looking for devil-may-care, charismatic, a little rough around the edges, a little edgy, says things that are not always the kindest thing, as long as they’re funny. For Jensen, the level of emotion and totally flawed, screwed-to-hell psyche that he brings to Dean, we really are enamored with. This idea that on the surface here’s this Han Solo devil-may-care persona, but when you really scratch beneath the surface, you see that anyone who has that persona has it because they are just so messed up, and that you would have to be so screwed up and damaged to be the person who always jumps first off a cliff._ \- Eric Kripke


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